


The Andorian Boy-Band Solution

by canistakahari



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Era, Dancing, Guilty Pleasures, Humor, M/M, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim is secretly addicted to "So You Think You Can Dance". Bones is bewildered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Andorian Boy-Band Solution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [affectingly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/affectingly/gifts).



The first time Leonard McCoy begins to suspect something, he’s getting back to the dorm late from an aborted medical seminar that was cancelled due to a particularly violent outbreak of food poisoning; he thinks six different people have vomited on his boots today, which is a new personal record that he really wishes he didn’t have to claim.   
  
He can hear music and voices through the door when he slumps up against it tiredly, and he’s getting his angry pants on to bitch Jim out for having a fucking party on a  _Tuesday night_ , but when he swipes his ID card and the door whooshes open, the room is suddenly dead silent.   
  
“Jim?” he calls in confusion. Is he hearing auditory hallucinations, now?   
  
“Right here,” says Jim, sitting up on the couch and turning to face McCoy. His grin is wide and sunny and  _so full of shit_  that McCoy can’t even stand it.   
  
“What were you doing?” he asks suspiciously, looking around the room as he drops his medkit to the floor and then toes off his boots.   
  
Nothing looks wrong as he moves into the main room, standing next to the couch. Jim has a PADD in his hands, but it isn’t on, and he’s actually holding it upside down. McCoy’s eyes narrow.   
  
Jim’s grin is getting a little strained.   
  
“Long day?” he asks, and to anyone else he’d sound totally nonchalant. But McCoy isn’t anyone else, and to him, Jim just sounds like he’s trying really hard to change the subject even though McCoy has  _no idea_  what the first topic even  _was_. So he glances around again cautiously, examining their surroundings with a carefully discerning eye, finds nothing outwardly amiss aside from some popcorn scattered over the couch, and finally shrugs as he sinks down onto the couch next to Jim.   
  
“Anything on?” he asks, and starts to say, “computer, vidscreen on,” just as Jim yells, “Bones,  _no_!”  
  
He laughs so hard he  _cries_  when he realizes Jim was watching  _So You Think You Can Dance (GALAXY EDITION!)_.   
  


oOo

  
  
At first, he doesn’t realize it’s really a  _thing_  for Jim. He assumes it was just one time, that Jim was bored watching TV and was probably drawn in by Orion dancers, or something.   
  
The incident completely escapes him until two weeks later.  
  
He gets home around mid-afternoon from a shift that started early last night and he’s got schoolwork to do on top of his clinic hours, but instead of trying to keep his eyes open and stare blankly at a PADD, he just throws himself onto his bed and passes right the fuck  _out_.   
  
If the consistent passage of linear time is to be believed, it’s much later when Jim wakes him up. McCoy figures Jim must not have see him or know he’s home, because he turns the volume up loud again. McCoy peels open a reluctant eyelid, the chronometer telling him it’s just past 2300 hours, and then he rolls gracelessly off the mattress and sprawls face-down on the floor for a little while, trying to decipher the sounds blaring out of the common area.   
  
Music. Voices. Cheering. Applause?  
  
When he finally drags himself out into the brightly lit living space, blinking hard against the cheerful sunbursts and halos crowding eagerly into his vision, the sight that greets him is one of baffling – no, it’s not even that, it’s just –  _weird_. McCoy can take apart the individual parts of the image as easily as snapping open an old-fashioned analog pocket-watch and shaking out the cogs, but damned if he could ever put all the little fiddly bits back together in the correct order.   
  
Jim’s got popcorn again, which sparks some vague recognition in the tired recesses of his ragingly exhausted brain. And then there are Jim’s long fingers, scooping it up and jamming it into his pink, smiling mouth. Jim eating popcorn. That’s fine. McCoy can cope with that.   
  
But something is happening on the vidscreen – something brightly-coloured and magnetic and far too swirly for McCoy’s eyes to keep up – and then Jim  _shrieks_  aloud in evident glee, the popcorn bowl erupting off his lap in a flowing lava-like mess of kernels, and he throws his arms up and shouts, “Fuck  _yes_ , nailed it!”  
  
As far as McCoy is concerned, that’s not really the appropriate response to watching someone finish a dance routine while a televised crowds cheers wildly in full surround sound.   
  
However, looking at the joyous, rapturous glee on Jim’s face is almost –  _almost_  – infectious. McCoy blinks, grin threatening to tug at his lips, but it’s Jim he’s looking at, not the screen.   
  
“Jim,” he says, raising his voice a little because Jim isn’t likely to notice him right now unless he breakdances across the floor and freezes right in front of him.   
  
“Bones!” cries Jim, jumping to his feet like he’s been electrocuted. “Holy shit, are you a fucking ninja now? Did you crawl in through the window?”  
  
“I’ve been here since about 1500,” replies McCoy, and he can’t help the enormous, insufferable grin that spreads across his face. “Have I missed the show?”  
  
“What? Oh, that, no, I wasn’t watching that,” babbles Jim. It isn’t often McCoy gets to enjoy the sight of James T. Kirk  _blushing like a schoolgirl_.   
  
“Really?” drawls McCoy. “’Cause I’d say you were. Only dogs could hear you, Jim.”  
  
“Don’t you judge me!” cries Jim, pointing accusingly at McCoy. “You know how to  _cross-stitch_!”  
  


oOo

  
  
When Jim eventually realises McCoy isn’t  _actually_  going to laugh him out of house and home, it’s like he’s unwittingly turned on some sort of obnoxious shop window sign blazing bright neon with the words **YOUR BEWILDERING DANCE SHOW, PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT IT**. It’s usually unprompted, Jim sitting down with him in class or in the mess hall, opening his mouth, and then suddenly speaking in tongues, a completely foreign, alien language tumbling out of him unceasingly that just doesn’t make any sense at all to McCoy. He suspects even Uhura would have trouble with it. McCoy sometimes privately suspects Jim is completely fucking with him, waiting until he finally cracks and demands to know just how much of an idiot Jim takes him for, but in the end, Jim’s far too enamored with his subject matter to have put this much thought or effort into slowly trying to drive McCoy mad.   
  
He doesn’t have the heart to tell Jim he doesn’t understand, let alone  _care_  about who got kicked off the show and which idiot twisted his ankle and how tentacles are totally a distinctly unfair advantage, because Jim only lights up like this when he’s teasing McCoy or learning something amazing or having sex.   
  
It’s endearing, and he likes seeing the casual, relaxed excitement on Jim’s face. So if saying, “What happened on the show last night?” gets him that electric spark of a smile, then McCoy’ll keep asking.   
  


oOo

  
  
It’s inevitable that McCoy actually gets sucked into watching the damn show. Jim has got it into his stupid pretty sandy-gold head that McCoy will totally love it if he’ll just sit through  _one episode_ , c’mon Bones, please?   
  
It’s got entertainment value, McCoy’s gotta give it that. He starts laughing so hard he’s turning red and hiccupping when the Andorian boy band turns up and massacres what is apparently supposed to be a traditional Tellarite waltz, though McCoy has seen  _snails_  with more talent. The Klingon tap-dancer is somehow even better.  
  
“This is the  _best show ever_ ,” he wheezes, wiping tears from his eyes.   
  
“You see?” demands Jim, thwacking him hard on the back. “You should never doubt my taste, Bones.”  
  
McCoy tries to respond, probably in a negative way, because Jim once went out in public wearing cut-off jean shorts and a floral print shirt, but whatever indignant remarks he prepared dissolve into a fresh wave of disbelieving laughter when all the contestants reappear together for a choreographed group dance.   
  
He’s never seen a Vulcan pop and lock. It’s  _probably_  the best moment of his life.   
  
It helps that Jim’s in his lap, laughing that wide, toothy laugh of his, all pink lips and bright tongue, open and warm and sincerely jubilant. McCoy feels reverential in moments like this, his hands flat on Jim’s hips and pushing under his shirt and into his pants, splayed over warm skin.   
  
He moves his tongue over Jim’s jaw, tasting salt and sun, and Jim turns, laughing, into McCoy’s mouth.


End file.
